Do you think that the security apparatus was invested in your case or the Bhima Koregaon case?
There is no evidence in these two cases. There is no case at all—no crime. They are fabricated. So, it is possible that at some level, vested interests linked to the state machinery must have played a role. After the Delhi violence in 2020, and during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, most cases were fabricated in a similar manner.
Somewhere down the line, a particular trend becomes noticeable across all these cases. Ten years ago, I was the first person to be implicated in a case, in a specific manner, on certain charges. First you go and raid a house, seize certain material and keep it for months. You come back and say that this is incriminating material, or you plant something during the first raid and create doubts among the public that something else is happening. Since then, a similar pattern has emerged in the way in which every democratic-rights defender is being targeted. These are the darkest times that our generation has seen. The witch-hunting of democratic voices is much more intense and planned now than it was in the Emergency. As it is, the democratic structure is very shallow in our country. Whatever little existed due to peoples’ struggles is now being destroyed.
The practice of fabricating cases will stop only when accountability is fixed. There is no way that the political leadership of the country will do it, but one hopes that the judiciary will take serious note.
GN Saibaba: "Peace is not possible without justice" A final conversation on prisons and democracy | SHAHID TANTRAY